Comments on the race of life.

Food – an old method remembered

No one had to worry about pesticides on their veggies, or foreign chemicals in their food. Commercially produced food was a thing of the future.

Food wasn’t half as exotic as it is now. We lived in Africa, so some of our food was what people in the UK might call exotic – like mangos and avocado pears. They simply grew all around us.

My Grandmother (with whom we lived) did all the cooking and grew her own vegetables. Compared to other families around us, we were pretty poor. But I only realised that when my mother left eventually and moved, with us, into a new house on her own. Then, I realised we were poor. She was extremely mean with money.

At Grandmother’s we always had a soup pot on the back of the stove. She made our bread. We had illegally made white bread once a week and I helped her with the criminal activity of sieving “Government flour” to white flour.

Grandpa’s favourite luncheon was cubed tomato, cheese and onion which he used to eat with gusto from a bowl.

On Sundays we had roast chicken and all the trimmings. The chicken was often our own. I can’t ever remember feeling sorry for it even though I watched the execution and helped with the plucking. When Grandmother had enough tiny downy feathers, they were used in pillows.

There was always food. We never went hungry. We were never unloved. I didn’t know we were poor.